Witty-Full Capsules…Prescribed By Me!

Month: August 2014

It is a big old hilly city out here. To be able to get through the seven hills on which this city is built on, you need a degree of fitness attribution. I am by no means a sporty person and I am by no means the fittest either. If I can make it to the bus stop without pulsating lungs, it is a triumph.

Almost a year ago I was proselytised into a new form of sport, I mean dance – Salsa! My hips had me believe that neither the hills of this city nor anything else they could ever engage in would:

A- Reduce their burgeoning size

B- Give them eternal innomination

The past 15 years saw the birth and the consequent rapid growth of my hips. There was the occasional truce here and there but for the most part it was an onslaught on neighbouring citadels of legs, bum and tum! They got greedy and were not content with their specified or desired territory. There was no stopping them.

Oh the horror!!

The sovereignty of my legs, bum and tum and their right to exist independently was thus tested and tried; pushed to the fringes of no definition. With no afore mentioned referendum, a union was sought.

Salsa dancing proved otherwise. It came in at a precarious time in our affiliation. To an extent Salsa provided us with some truce, a common ground…at the very best it gave me the ammunition I needed to respond to this offensive.

After having the pleasure of being swirled, twirled and twisted around the dance floor to the rhythms of Mambo, Cucaracha, Basic back and Opening out, hours on end every week; a white flag of mercy was waved by my hips. Something I wasn’t familiar with was taking place, a new phenomenon was emerging!

Oh the joy!!!

Muscles, tendons, labrum, cartilage that I didn’t know existed were beginning to surface. The cries of help emerging from the opposition were now all but too palpable. I revelled in this: in this revelation that my hips concealed from me.

Alas these hips were responding to something!!!

As it turns out we both liked Salsa; so much so that we came to a mutual agreement hitherto unheard of. Insofar, we are enjoying this harmonious period. My hips have agreed to put the ambush on hold and I stopped my feeble threats of joining the gym and exercising.

I am not certain how long this peace process will last for, but I am sure I speak for both of us when I say that I and my hips are currently enjoying the right to life, liberty and security provided under the Salsa 2013 Treaty.

I am someone who has had the good fortune of being borne and brought up in a household full of feminist hypochondriacs. From a young age I was indoctrinated with the ways of the world albeit cryptically. As a child you don’t appreciate the linguistic wonders of metaphors, analogies and proverbs which my parents utilised more often than I could recall and thus I was unable to fully comprehend the gravity of what messages my parents were attempting to convey to me. I was too busy chasing balls (strictly of the leather type), being a tom boy and advancing my skills as a centre forward to care too much for their crypticism.

With little assistance from the Angels and the Almighty or so my mother tells me I came into this world. I was always a cheery go lucky child who grew up to be a bit too trusting of strangers, or so my father tells me. So unbeknown to me my parents devised a plan to ensure that I don’t grow up too gullible especially where men are concerned and later in my teenage life – girls. My mother was always of the belief that girls are a mischief and having brought up five girls she was of the belief too that this was her golden ticket to heaven – My mother works in mysterious ways!

I was born at an unfortunate time where the joys of wondering off as a child were slowly diminishing. Though things were not as bad as they are now but the signs were cropping up. There were the odd horror stories here and there concerning children.

Years of primary socialisation that my parents took upon themselves remained forever ingrained in my brains. My mother used to say “strangers are friends you are yet to meet and I’ll be sure it stays that way”. We can all conclude that I had a sheltered life.

Consequently, as an adult hypochondriac woman with Feminist tendencies, I am weary of unsolicited conversations, gifts and offerings from people who I am not familiar with. Not so long ago a male colleague started working with us. Unfortunately before we could get to know each other I jetted off on much deserved and belated annual leave from work. I am unsurest as to what happened in that time but all I know is that grapes are a thing for this guy.

I am not aloof and I am not overtly friendly either. I am particularly volatile capricious pre 12pm. I don’t ask for much, all I want is to be left alone with my coffee and respond to whatever vituperation humans have via the best mode of communication invented for folks like me- Emails! Save the world one human at a time with few unicorns and mermaids thrown in for a good measure.

Post 12:00 pm a different woman emerges; one that is more receptive to other modes of communication including the occasional human format; I’ll even hmm and ahh at few office gossips! Suspending my frivolous digression and coming back to the story at hand… So when someone disturbs this little routine and wants to engage in some small talk pre 12:00 pm with offerings of grapes that I don’t know where they have been, I am a little taken aback. When someone offers me grapes that I don’t know where they have been and then instructs me to eat them as they watch me; I am more than taken aback.

My hypochondria comes out in full blow. I assume some verbal diarrhoea about how it is lunch time and studies show that grapes are best eaten after food and how the acidity found in grapes can cause untoward incidents to someone’s intestines.

All the inculcating ideas on how I shouldn’t talk to strangers my parents instilled in me as a child do go out of the window every now and then. I like to give people benefit of the doubt, most of the time anyway. So I got talking to this individual. There is something inviting about me despite all my attempts at staying aloof. Our exchange was plagued by platitude at best, mendacity at worst.

I don’t know if this guy has some weird grape fetish, or whether I show signs of grape malnutrition or if it is just his way of peace offering- maybe a triangulation of all three. I don’t know…

All I know is my germ sirens have been giving off prolonged warning signs. I have had few sleepless nights worrying about all the possible germs I might have contracted. I have rescheduled few meetings in an attempt to disinfect my desk, only for Mr. Grapes to come back with yet more lashings of the damn fruit personally hand washed by him. I also know that I probably erased all possible signs of natural oils in my hands due to excessively washing them.

In hindsight I wish I feigned an allergy to grapes but then again grapes aren’t the only fruit and I believe where there is a will there is a way.

There was a banana on my desk this morning!

I wonder how much time one should allow to lapse before one can report suspicious behaviour on the grounds of gratuitous grapes?!

Mondays are contentious. They always crop up on me unexpectedly. Things never take the course they intend to take, which means come Monday morning I am all over the place. Every place other than where I should be both mentally and physically.

Mentally I am still entangled in a web of weekend wisteria partying hard with fellow ethereal entities. I brush shoulders (amongst other bodily parts depending on the style of our rave) with mermaids and unicorns. We have established a happy coexistence over the years. Untamed, undiscovered, unnaturally natural.

Somehow Mondays happen to be the day in which my mental capabilities desert me and remain in that vortex of daydreams. I don’t think ethereal entities realise that I am a wanted women in the real world come Monday morning.

Physically, things aren’t any better either. My physical capabilities too are restrained to that of my slumber chamber. There is something about morning sleep that is enchanting and encompassing in a way that night sleep isn’t. Night sleep doesn’t offer as many enticing prospects, thus we are not best of buddies. Resistance on either part is futile, so we gave up the struggle to please one another long ago; it is safe to say we don’t miss each other.

Night time sleep allows me to get on with pursuing perplexing paraphernalia that are hitherto not possible. Insomniac idiosyncrasies are thus the norm. Where night sleep fails, morning sleep succeeds. It flourishes, nourishes and fulfils.

Gripped by post annual leave blues, I begrudgingly left my slumber nest this Monday morning in a feeble attempt to re-join the wonderful world of work. What I didn’t expect on this unlikely warm northern Monday morning was mellowness… Mellowness to this Monday.

I went into work expecting the place to wreak havoc, not because I hold the place together and my absence will make it fall apart (actually why the humbleness, that place more or less relies on the functionality of my brain cells), but because Mondays generally are a mayhem. Everything that could go pear shaped from wardrobe to board decisions do indeed! The day just refuses to cooperate or allow me to operate on mutual terms, so by the time it’s almost over and Tuesday is beckoning; I am left disparaged.

But not today … Not this Monday. It came with a sense of empathy. It recognised my need, my want, my desire, my hope and prayers to be left alone; for this day to pass without things going haywire both at home and at work. It left me alone to get on with more pressing issues such as having one last rave with fellow ethereal entities before I fully let go of the holiday mode. Monday has recognised that Tuesday is another day too, for which such catastrophes can be left for; in which case I shall be more aptly prepared to deal with.

But for now I shall sit here, slowly sipping my Turkish Tea whilst I await the denouement of this day to unfold.

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